Is matcha just a format now?

Ryan · 0:06

Hello and welcome to the Specialty Matcha Podcast. My name is Ryan. This is Zongjun Li, who also goes by Sam. Hello, hello, and with the co-founders of Sanko matcha products. Yeah, we're launching this podcast to discuss our learning journey in Matcha, or should we call that Morcha or Malcha or powder green tea Ryan, and share startup stories and interview experts.

Ryan · 0:28

But you know, today's topic will mainly be on, you know, the very name of this green powder that has been debated over and over again by many people with different points of view. So we wouldn't have a somewhat fresh take, but it's pretty like hot online topic in discourse about one.

Ryan · 0:46

What is the definition of matcha? What is real and fake? And like what the word matcha even means now? And I think it's worth asking, is Matcha just a format now versus something that needs a very strict definition? So this is sort of debate style, discussion style topic between Sam and Zongjun and I about sort of our thoughts and the different perspectives that we've heard. Because I think you can legitimately argue very different sides of this depending on what you care about and what you prioritize first.

Zongjun · 1:23

Like the consumer, the culture, the history, the legacy, and whether or not you care about small brands, whether or not you care about innovation. There's got these different lenses you can put on it, which makes it a really interesting podcast topic. Yes, indeed.

Zongjun · 1:37

And Ryan and I have been actually debating over this topic over and over again in the past few years. And our perspective has shift a little bit to different spectrums, but largely we're still in a, I said I was in fairly intense disagreement at the moment still.

Ryan · 1:54

So which makes this podcast, I think will be very interesting. Yeah. So let's start inwards and zoom out. And one of the things that prompted this is one of our good industry friends, Jules Reyes, put out a reel where she was discussing some Chinese matcha that she was drinking, or Chinese mocha if you are in that camp, and was asking her audience what people thought about, you know, matcha coming from places outside of Japan.

Ryan · 2:23

And a really prominent well known producer in Wazuka in Kyoto Prefecture commented that it's, and you know, they said something that we've heard over and over in the matcha industry, is that matcha's like champagne, if it's not grown in champagne, it cannot be called champagne. And that Japan has done a very bad job protecting it. But, you know, anything coming out of Japan should be green tea powder.

Zongjun · 2:47

So Sam, how would you interpret that comment sort of at face value and then we can kind of zoom out from there? Yeah, we Chinese didn't do a good job protecting matcha. That's why it got to Japan, actually. You know, intellectually I agree with him.

Zongjun · 3:01

This Japanese tea producers, I mean, like, it's really in the name Matcha. That's a Japanese name for a very much Japanese product. And you know, I have always been advocating for using a different term, whether or not it's more cha or malcha in Korean or whatever language they use speaking in your local area, to kind of bucket this powder green tea format tea underneath this new name or a different name other than matcha. But, you know, realistically speaking, it's really not that actionable, like from a, you know, consumer perception and recognition point, with you pushing out a new name just makes things more confusing for

Zongjun · 3:45

everybody. And there's no regulatory entity to enforce that. And you are just introducing another confusing term into this already chaotic environment. But you know, intellectually speaking, matcha is really it's matcha, right? You're literally pronouncing a Japanese word when you speak matcha.

Ryan · 4:06

Yes, but you can also argue the other side. So let's talk about the semantic argument for matcha, or what the word actually means and where it came from. Originally it came from the Chinese term for powder tea, and then in Japanese kanji they add a hand radical to signify that, you know, this powder format is powderized by hand, which was implying the usage of the ishi-usu, which was powered by hand back in the days.

Ryan · 4:36

That's the evolution of the semantic meaning of these names. But you know, if you really date back to the origin, it's right, it's powder tea. And it's a description also, like literally powdered or rubbed tea. That's right. But also like, if you really trace back to the origin, that was very vague from the very beginning. People in Song dynasty didn't just drink like pure tea. There's still some mixture of some other ingredients.

Ryan · 5:03

And if you date back to Tang Dynasty, which is the previous dynasty before Song dynasty, where people also were drinking powder tea, they were adding like gingers and mountain junipers and all kinds of things into the tea soup.

Ryan · 5:17

It really was a soup at the time. And that was also in the powder format. It's powder tea. It's still mocha, mocha. And it just gets evolved into what nowadays people are perceiving what matcha is like. If you trace back the linkage, there isn't a clear cut of, you know, what is truly the most traditional or the most pure or the most right version of this tea format. Yeah, indeed.

Ryan · 5:46

I mean, if you take a can of like Mariu Q Kalyama and back to someone studying before Riku's time, let's say 100 years before Riku, who was drinking matcha, matcha wasn't shaded at that point. It was likely not, not shaded.

Ryan · 6:01

It would be almost an unrecognizable product even within Japan, taken out of its time and out of its context. So the very meaning and understanding of what matcha is is fluid and has changed throughout the centuries, and actually even throughout the millennia that the history goes back that far, to semantically, you know, speaking, it is a descriptive name. It literally just means powdered tea. Now you can argue the other side of this too, that at any time and place and context, everyone has an idea of what certain words mean, right?

Ryan · 6:35

Everyone has an idea of what champagne tastes like. And a wine produced outside of the champagne region may or may not live up to those expectations that someone gets when they think that they are purchasing or drinking champagne. And same can be true for matcha, right? The idea of matcha as a product, and part of the reason it's gotten famous globally, are because of its color. A lot of people have expectations around its health benefits.

Ryan · 7:04

A lot of people have expectations around the taste. And if you deliver a product that might deviate from any of these things that meet consumers' expectations, it can drag down the whole industry. Now, is it fair that a Japanese tea producer is calling all Chinese matcha essentially fake and that it's green tea powder? I don't know.

Ryan · 7:25

Actually a lot of the Chinese made product is made with Japanese cultivars, Japanese processing equipment. And even Japanese people. And by Japanese people in some cases and milled on Japanese ishi-usu in China, which we we know exists. And the more you learn about matcha and matcha like production and speak about experts in agriculture, you learned that, you know, matcha is significantly less terroir driven than other teas because there's so much human intervention, the impact of fertilizer, the impact of shading, the impact of cultivar and the impact of processing. So long as you're able to

Ryan · 8:05

replicate these things, the terroir, so long as you're not killing the plant, actually matters significantly less than if we're talking about, you know, other types of tea or even other types of crops. So the ability to dislocate where it is grown to replicate that product, there's no fundamental reason why it can't be done.

Ryan · 8:24

So it's, you know, is it fair to call a product that is grown in China that is processed on the same equipment from the same cultivars with intervention from people that have the same knowledge, Japanese people doing work in China with the same or similar fertilizers and milled on similar equipment fake?

Zongjun · 8:44

I don't know. I think that's a bit disingenuous actually. But if you're comparing it to just some random green tea powder crap that was not shaded at all and then, you know, quickly ball milled from non Japanese cultivars, yeah, that's bastardizing.

Zongjun · 8:57

But you deliver that to a consumer and you call it matcha, it brings down the whole industry. But on the other hand, if we were to bring one of these high end Chinese matcha, especially one that we recently had and to this producer, I would be a little bit surprised if they would be able to identify it as a non Japanese product.

Ryan · 9:16

Well I would be very surprised. It's better than a lot of the mid tier lower tier Japanese matcha from like Shizuoka Kagoshima that I have tried before. Yeah, significantly better actually that made from a Japanese company with a roots and Uji no less, but produced in mainland China. That's like the semantic side of this debate. And but we're still talking about tea that comes from tencha, right?

Zongjun · 9:42

So the, the the processing is still very similar. But Sunjin, what if we zoom out and talk about tea that is milled into a matcha like consistency from non tencha? Is it fair to call that matcha like Gyokuro matcha? Is that like a fair description? I'll just, well, I think from the Japanese perspective, they already made a decision.

Ryan · 10:07

They will not call a hojicha powder hojicha matcha or matcha, black matcha, dark matcha or brown matcha like they called a hojicha powder. And I think that's a interesting judgement framework. If we want to borrow that, like if we kind of strictly adhere to the current definition of for matcha should be it should be powder that's coming from tencha, not from any other format of, of tea based material. But on the other hand, you know, how how would you enforce, how would you enforce that definition to consumers when they understand a definition?

Ryan · 10:50

It's very difficult to kind of re educate them into, you know, understanding some other things like it's just adding confusions into a already, you know, low awareness or growing awareness market. And you have all these discourse constantly fighting for each other.

Ryan · 11:08

And obviously, if you use the term matcha, it's like people trying to use the term ceremonial grade. It's trying to imply for a higher quality or a matcha like product. Like people are naturally incentivized to use a more premium term to describe their product. Yeah.

Ryan · 11:29

Natural path of incentive. So I mean, it is going to happen and I've seen a lot of just very famous and respected or even upstart tea companies that will label things as like Gyokuro Matcha, for example. And like, you know, going back to the episode that we recorded with Mark and Jules, both formerly of Jade Leaf Matcha, one of the really early, early predominant e-commerce matcha brands in the United States.

Ryan · 11:54

He said something interesting, you know, and it really stuck with me. He said, you know, marketers will say and do whatever they want and it's just a reality of the world. And you know, the majority of that person's job is to get someone to understand something in 2 seconds. The cost of customer acquisition is not free. If you're a tea company, or any company for that matter, finding someone who will buy the thing that you're selling costs money and costs time.

Ryan · 12:22

And any layers of complication that you put on top of that is a barrier that you're putting up for yourself. And if you're a random upstart tea company and let's say Germany and you're labeling your milled Gyokuro product as Gyokuro Matcha and you're sourcing it from a producer in Japan, right?

Ryan · 12:43

Like it's just going to get across much faster about what it is to someone than calling it just like Gyokuro powder or gyokuro is a word that the average German consumer might not know. You know, the matcha is definitely a word that the average person knows and it's still honest. And you know, quite frankly, the person that they're buying it from might literally have it labeled as Gyokuro matcha on their catalog from a Japanese producer themselves. So like it's you can't fault that. Person.

Zongjun · 13:13

Yeah, that's right. That's right. And now you even have brands like Yunomi, who has a very long and descriptive page kind of defining different grades of matcha, you know, different styles of matcha. But like they're even saying like Midori matcha is anything from powdered non tencha leaves.

Zongjun · 13:32

So they're defining it, but they're still using the term matcha because it instantly communicates or ulong matcha or roasted matcha, which they put in parentheses is hojicha powder or black tea matcha, etcetera. And they have many of these different things and just communicating something as matcha just gets the idea crossed so much faster. It's arguably be much better for consumers. For now, for now, I guess actually an interesting thought, kind of a segue from the current conversation, but it's still related to I think marketers are doing so because matcha is really what consumer knows for

Zongjun · 14:11

the moment and it's the only term that people would use to imply for a higher quality product. But I think that might change in the future, especially if we continue to see the quality of Chinese matcha increase in the future. The tendency of people trying to use a unique word to kind of differentiate their own product from a product that's made from somewhere else will be, will be much higher in the future. We actually saw this happen for Baijiu. It's the Chinese liquor.

Zongjun · 14:45

They, they used to just call it, you know, Chinese vodka or, you know, Chinese grains, grain spirits. They're trying to use a, you know, a term that people will understand from the Western perspective to describe the product. They're calling it Baijiu.

Zongjun · 15:00

They're marketing it as Baijo and Baijo is getting recognized in the global context. And I think that might happen in the future. If you know the the quality of powder green tea or Chinese matcha continue to increase and there are more, you know, either processing or farming technique or farming culture or cultivar that emerge as more uniquely Chinese versus adopting technology or technique from Japan. I think this this this might actually happen as at some point and will become a new term that implies for something that's uniquely Chinese and also equivalently high quality. Yeah, and there's a lot of

Ryan · 15:46

incentive for people to do that. You know, like it's like champagne, you know, other places called a sparkling wine, but you know, in Spain they call it Cava and you know, people are perfectly fine with that. It also implies for a very uniquely Spanish product that is champagne liked.

Zongjun · 16:02

The problem is though, within the case of China, is that there's a huge economic incentive to make imitation, what I'll call an imitation product, which for that sounds there's a lot of judgement. No, no, no. But I'm saying there's always going to be two camps, right?

Ryan · 16:18

You're, you're developing 2 very similar products. There can be some producers in China that are doing innovation in their own thing and like leaning maybe more into different processing techniques or Chinese cultivars, etcetera.

Ryan · 16:30

But on the other side, right, there's going to still be people that are trying to create what they're creating in Japan. And that's an imitation product. It's like everything about that recipe, that tencha creation and then matcha creation is what people know and would associate with as matcha.

Zongjun · 16:50

So then where do you draw that line? Well, it's it might be confusing for for the near term, but in the future it might not SP as you might expect it. I give you another example, Ryan, the term whiskey spells differently in Ireland and in in the UK.

Zongjun · 17:08

The difference is missing E Honestly, there's no like that much fundamental difference between whiskey making in Ireland versus whiskey making in Scotland. But you know, they are different enough name, there's a difference of the one character. And you know, it's an interesting comparison. If you compare the kanji between, you know, matcha and mocha, you know, it's basically the same kanji with just a different radical.

Zongjun · 17:33

And they're historically related to and now people perceive them as a very distinctive product based on their Geo location and, you know, and the cultural lineage and history lineage of both products. But there are always be people in China that are trying to produce a Japanese like product.

Zongjun · 17:50

And there might be some people like geolocation like almost doesn't fit. It's like more of a, a style or category creation. And then even within that category creation of let's call it a Chinese mocha renaissance where they really start developing their own categories going to have enormous variation.

Ryan · 18:09

Like if you're just looking at the product itself, right? There's going to be product that is distinctly Chinese with Chinese characteristics in its taste and in its processing and in the people who made it. And there's going to be products that are distinctly Japanese in its processing and characteristics, I think, that are being produced in China.

Zongjun · 18:29

These are, you know, champagne producers and cover producers. They learn from each other all the time. Irish whiskey producers and Scottish whiskey producers, they learn from each other all the time. And I think the same thing will happen between, you know, Chinese macho morchai in the future and Japanese matcha.

Zongjun · 18:47

I think the but the incentive is that the producers want to make a difference in the future. Right now they are, you know, kind of taking a ride from this Japanese matcha height and calling it, you know, Chinese matcha.

Ryan · 18:59

But as in the future, when there's a distinctive style and culture being formed eventually in China, and I think it will happen, I think, you know, people will naturally want to call their product differently. Yeah, maybe even more confusing for consumers and then? May not like that then it will.

Zongjun · 19:20

I think it will be like if you really want a specialty movement to happen or fertile soil for specialty. I think making distinction is important and I think people would love to learn about that. And it's easier, I think, for people to to remember or to recognize the product from a different area if the name itself is different.

Ryan · 19:41

And what do we call this? The powdered tea industry? Like if we look at the coffee industry or the chocolate industry, right, it's not or the wine industry, like you don't call it by 1000 different things like it's it's like the matcha is like really forming its own very distinct category with consumers who love it as a coffee replacement.

Ryan · 20:02

It's a non coffee replacement, right? Like it even lives outside of the realm of tea a little bit in consumers. Like it's pretty interesting. We we get trapped in this bubble of people who know and have a very opinionated about matcha and I really love opinionated people. I I find exploring these perspectives just fascinating from just like a like almost an anthropology perspective. But I was talking, I was in, in New Year's Eve, which my girlfriend's friend group in Brittany and France and there were about 10 other French people at this New Year's Eve party and was chatting with some people. You know, it's just shocking.

Ryan · 20:43

Like these are all people, A lot of them live in Paris or in some other French city. And you know, we're all the same age. We're all around, you know, 3030 plus years old. Everyone has a decent amount of international experience. Actually French people in general are much more likely to have international experience than other people because at least at their university that they all went to and met at, it's mandatory to spend 6 months abroad. And if you're not very if you don't want to explore those people go to Belgium because a French speaking part of Belgium. But you know, a lot of other people went to Japan, Costa Rica, the US, like all over.

Ryan · 21:20

And so these are like pretty decently travelled people. And we were talking about matcha. Most people here have no idea it's a Japanese product, which is like shock. And most of these people, most of her friends work in agriculture.

Ryan · 21:32

And so that's really weird and not every, everyone knows that it's tea, right? But the, where the average consumer is AT is in like, it's, it's very different than I think where the, the, the bleeding edge of this conversation trying to define what matcha is, right? Like it is almost new category formation for a lot of people, the vast majority of people, right? You have matcha, you have coffee, you have Chai. And like, where those things intersect and what they have in common is, I think, less clear in those people's minds that we all like to think.

Zongjun · 22:08

I think this complication already exists for for tea and it's already embedded in a lot of languages in the world. Like if you look around the world, like how do different languages call this very plain Camellia sinensis?

Zongjun · 22:22

Like someone some people call them Chai, some people call them tea, or any variations of tea actually. You know it can all be traced back to how Chinese call this tea originally in China from different regions. Like all of the tea calling customs can be traced back to Hokkien, which the local Hokkien people call tea tea.

Zongjun · 22:45

And all of the cha calling culture can be traced back to southern China or northern China through the Silk Road. That's routing through the land versus if you route it through Hokkien, it's from the sea. So from the land culture, it's all cha or Chai or any, you know, variations of that.

Zongjun · 23:05

So it's already, you know, a pretty confusing name to begin with for the plan itself. And I think this might also exist for a matcha or more Chai in the future. People will eventually just pick a side. Pick a side or use both, I don't know.

Ryan · 23:20

Or use. Both or use both, yeah. And then you have the legal side, right, If we talk about like legal definitions for food categorization, right, like one of the only rules in like Japan is that it has to be made from tencha. But even this rule is we've heard is frequently violated, especially for a lot of the mass market matcha products coming out of out of Japan, where there's a significant amount of what's called mogacha, which is like almost tencha. It's tencha that's not processed in a tencha factory, but it's processed on Sencha processing equipment. They just turn off the rolling function, which apparently gets blended in all of the time to

Ryan · 24:02

stuff that gets labeled as matcha from. So we even within, you know, the country of Japan, you have quote, UN quote fake matcha being sold as matcha, let alone having also other countries tencha getting blended into those products, violating even the Japanese farmers complaint or perspective that anything outside of Japan should not be considered matcha. There's a big collective problem, not only the broader community, but also I think within Japan and this legal status of what can be sold as matcha doesn't exist in Japan. It doesn't appear to be really enforced in Japan, and I don't see it happening anywhere else

Ryan · 24:43

in the world either. For what can be legally sold as matcha, because how in the world could you enforce it? They can. If you can't enforce it in Japan, if someone like the government of Thailand or or the European Union stepped in and said, OK, we're having a strict definition for matcha. It has to come from Japan, has to come from tencha, and it has to be shaded for this number of days and only come from these cultivars.

Zongjun · 25:08

You could never. It'd be so difficult to enforce if you know even the Japanese are blending in Mogichar Chinese tencha and do their own products. Yeah, very true, very true. I mean, there's no regulatory entity to enforce any of these ideas or ideologies that people imposed onto this product. And I think there's very little thing that anyone can do about it.

Zongjun · 25:32

I'm a little more pessimistic on on this and maybe pessimistic is the wrong word. I actually pretty neutral in terms of how Macha is being used freely by by different parties. I mean like in reality it has transcend its cultural and language context. It's no longer in anyone's control and no one, no one has any power to really do anything about it. I mean, intellectually speaking, I think, you know, matcha is inherently Japanese.

Zongjun · 26:03

It's in its name. It's a Japanese term. But you know, realistically speaking, I think there's there's very little things that anyone can do about. Yeah. And even if you were to Geo restrict what you call and like what you would call matcha, like what you know China maybe gets a pass because there's a Chinese legacy and tradition of matcha in China.

Zongjun · 26:25

But what about tencha that gets converted into macha or some type of imagine a world where like what is it called when you produce tencha on the north of Thailand and grind it into a powder or in northern Vietnam or if what if Myanmar and starts producing tencha or other countries.

Zongjun · 26:44

What about Korea? I mean they have their word malcha. But then what do you call it? Like that would be super weird. Like you have the exact recipe for tencha being produced in northern Thailand. Let's say to our knowledge as a few people doing it.

Zongjun · 26:57

So then, then what do you do? They all can use the name matcha. I give them the pass. But and then you have like, actual behavior, right? Like words are kind of strange because they're outside of people's control. You can try to enforce it and but the enforcement I think always needs to be top down.

Zongjun · 27:17

There has to be some authority that says OK, Champagne, we're recognizing this as it must be grown within the region that the French government determines is Champagne and every single country on earth goes with this, has to comply in that as well.

Zongjun · 27:34

It actually in the case of Russia, Russia, I think maybe, maybe North Korea too, I don't know. But I know Russia for sure is one of the only major countries that doesn't has never honored champagne as a what we call like protected single origin because Stalin loves Champagne and they started making some within the USSR.

Ryan · 27:57

And typically it's actually incredibly sweet. And so if you go to Russia, IA couple years ago in 2019, I spent two weeks in Russia doing consumer research for food and beverage preferences. And the idea of champagne, that word in Russia has taken on a very different meaning to the average consumer there. To them, it is the sweet, sparkly wine, and that's what it's been since the time of Stalin, who loves champagne and loves specifically loves sweet champagne. That word is taken on an entirely new meaning in a place where it is outside of its context, right. So it's.

Zongjun · 28:38

You know, Ryan, like it already happened once when the matcha gets transferred into Japan. You know Japanese matcha is does not taste like what matcha tastes like back in the days in China. Like the judgement of high quality is thick foam and as white or as held as possible back in Song dynasty.

Zongjun · 29:02

It's not the same like not how the Japanese would appreciate for matcha even since the days of Rikyu. It's a different product. It's a Russian champagne for the Chinese. Even the words have been used in abuse throughout time, especially if you look into Korean tea history, they you know, we use the character cha, the Chinese character cha for tea and for a lot of tea scholars it's actually pretty confusing. And to my knowledge the same with an ancient Chinese texts is that tea is actually a very general term, especially during when you reference the Joseon dynasty. When they use the character cha, it does not imply that it came from Camellia sinensis.

Zongjun · 29:44

It could be any like hot herbal infusion. I mean, this is still true to this day where you have these very generic words that kind of blur boundary, but people kind of understand what it means. But it gets used in abuse because technically can't be tea, and this comes from the tea plant, Camellia sinensis. But all throughout history actually, people have been abusing and using this word to communicate some type of herbal infusion, right?

Zongjun · 30:09

So it's not even unique to matcha. Yeah, it's not unique to Korea either. People in China do it all the time too. Usually we would add a prefix like something, something cha. Like if it's Mulberry leaf, we called it, you know, stangia cha. People still make a difference.

Ryan · 30:26

But but, you know, back in the ancient time, like the tea Bible Cha Jing, actually there was a difference. And some of the uses of those old terms do exist today. So the the leader Camellia sinensis has a unique name called Ming and the more bittered Camellia sinensis has a different character called 2 and and people still use those characters nowadays. Ming is more popular too, less so, but. Is they refer to cultivar or processing? What what?

Ryan · 30:57

What is makes it sweeter or more bitter? I think from what I have read from Cha Jing, it's probably referring to the cultivar like Lu Yu was talking about. You know, some tea tastes naturally sweeter, some tea tastes naturally more bitter. For our audience, Sam, who might be less versed in general tea history, you want to talk a little bit about Lu Yu and about Cha Jing.

Zongjun · 31:18

So Cha Jing or tea Bible is written by this scholar called Lu Yu who lives back in the Tang Dynasty and it was the first codified text that kind of consolidate the usage of farming tea, processing tea, consuming tea, also preparing tea and all of the culture and utensils related to for tea preparation.

Zongjun · 31:37

You know, in the history when people kind of trying to trace back the lineage of any tea cultures or tea consumptions habit in history in different areas, this is often times the reference of the origin. Yeah, it's like the the documentation of the first tea culture ever existed.

Zongjun · 31:56

Yeah, codified tea culture and, and, and, you know, certainly it, it has a lot of differences compared to how tea is consumed today in China or in any other countries in the world. But it's a, it's a pretty interesting time machine that we can kind of kind of see how, you know, even the very term for tea evolves throughout time. And it's actually quite, quite a short book to read, even for the translation version.

Ryan · 32:24

You can probably finish it in like one or two hours. So I strongly encourage everyone to read it at least once. Indeed, and there's a great scholar, great blog if you want to learn more about this in the US. His name is Steven Owyoung that does a lot of translations with a lot of footnotes of Cha Jing, the so-called Tea Bible written in the Tang dynasty to bring a lot of context because apparently it's very difficult to read if you don't have the references for a lot of what is referenced. But it's very interesting, like when, if if you do read it, you would be surprised how much similar people care about tea back in the days versus how

Zongjun · 33:04

people caring about the tawa, caring about the water, caring about the cultivar, the climate. Lu Yu was writing things that he cared about like the the same way as we care about tea today. He talks about different tea being grown in different areas and how is that impact the taste of the tea and you know, what kind of water is the best for tea.

Zongjun · 33:27

He actually has a ranking of how to harvest your water in different areas and which one is more suitable for tea consumption and you know, different utensils. How do you use that for tea preparations and how do you judge from, you know, the appearance of the tea to to judge its quality and all sorts of interesting things?

Zongjun · 33:48

And it's exactly how people would care about for a specialty product nowadays. Yeah, really aged well. First, first how to guide comprehensive guide to making. Delicious tea, Yes, indeed, indeed. And that was that was it was written like some like 700 AD.

Zongjun · 34:14

Yeah, like 1300 years ago. Yeah, 1500 years ago, 1200 years ago, 1300 years ago. Millennia ago, at least. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pretty crazy. It is pretty crazy. But yeah, Ryan, I mean like the definition for tea, like we we're talking about the definition for macho being fluid, but the definition for tea itself was fluid since the very beginning.

Ryan · 34:41

Yeah, it is. Yeah, very true, very true. And somehow not only, you know, the cultivation and the consumption being localized in all these areas, it even got localized in their languages. And I think it's really a beautiful thing. And I think that there's no fundamentally different. There's no fundamental difference of, you know, how people adopting the term matcha or morcha or malcha or however you want to call it in the future. You know, you know, if you want to compare that to, you know, how people adopt and adapt to the usage of tea or Chai or tae in different areas.

Ryan · 35:28

Yeah, I mean, I think we're going to see a lot of local adaptation. Something that I've been thinking a lot about is both Japanese tea culture in general, tea culture, right? Let's talk about Japanese tea culture and matcha culture. Where does it stop and start?

Ryan · 35:42

Can matcha culture or even Japanese tea culture live outside of this context? I would say that like the Urasenke Foundation of people, I'm practicing chanoyu in France or in Brazil or in the United States, right? Like they're participating in Japanese culture, right?

Ryan · 36:01

I would firmly put that on on on the side of the line of participating in matcha and Japanese tea culture. But then what about someone, a Brandy cafe in Rio de Janeiro drinking a matcha latte, drinking tea from Wazuka?

Zongjun · 36:16

Are they participating in Japanese tea culture? Are they participating in Japanese tea culture? More if they're consuming in Usucha versus a latte or more if it was hand whisked with the Chasen a versus batch prepared And like where we draw these lines as an industry of participating in culture. I don't think people necessarily need to participate in a culture when they consumed matcha.

Zongjun · 36:43

It's like people in the UK drinking a Chinese hongcha and milk and sugar into their cup. They're not participating in the Chinese culture. It's a uniquely UK culture, British culture, and I think it's totally fine. Like people doesn't necessarily need to carry the the cultural heritage when they just want to enjoy a cup of tea in the afternoon.

Zongjun · 37:04

Well, I would argue that they are participating in their own culture and they're. Participating in their own culture. Exactly. I totally agree with you Ryan. It's new culture. New culture. And if you zoom out, you can group this together. I mean, like if you just look at cafe culture and the culture of third space and of a coffee house, I mean, how different is someone enjoying a matcha latte in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia from Paris, France to New York City.

Ryan · 37:31

It's all this similar coffee culture, cafe culture, matcha latte, say culture like you see like all of these quote UN quote, matcha girly groups, but it's entirely new cultural formation as we, as we recorded on another podcast, unlike this idea of tea culture stopping and starting.

Ryan · 37:49

It's just these different pockets and some of them overlap. Some of them are concentric within one another. But you know, the idea of matcha culture being as broad as possible I think will lead to the most innovation. It's the most inclusive, and saying that all tea or matcha that's grown in China is fake, it's just green tea powder is not very inclusive.

Ryan · 38:12

And I do not really appreciate or like this spirit within the tea community. It's protectionism, it's insular, it's looking inwards. Typically it means looking backwards to justify one's own existence. And it leads to a less interesting world for consumers.

Ryan · 38:29

And I think it also traps and culture in the cage and makes it much more difficult to expand, to grow and to to bring on new practitioners. I don't think it's actually very healthy for the Japanese tea industry. But then on the other hand, you don't want a bunch of people calling like a really shitty product, you know, matcha.

Zongjun · 38:51

So like then you can protect almost matcha's quote UN quote brand. Well, how do we enforce that, Ryan? I mean, there's also a lot of really bad matcha that's made in Japan too. I mean, let's be honest. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ryan · 39:06

I mean, like there, there's no way like we can enforce anyone from using the term matcha. It's it's already freed and and however people want to dignify it or bastardize it, you know, like it's out of anyone's control. Yeah. And like, what are you going to do? Like, especially these players that are much more powerful. I mean, look at Starbucks.

Ryan · 39:27

I mean, Starbucks matcha is it comes from many different countries, like from China, from South Korea, from Japan itself, and depending on what country you're in and the tariff situation, like, for example, it's incredibly expensive to import Japanese tea into Korea. Korea and Korean policy don't really like Japan very much, culturally speaking.

Ryan · 39:48

So there's an enormous tariff on green tea. So to have a matcha latte in Korea, right, it's not economically viable to have a Japanese product. So you have all of that complication, too. And when you have a company as large as something like Starbucks calling matcha latte the same thing, whether or not it's made from the Japanese product, a Chinese product, a Korean product, or who knows where else they source from, they're just fighting an uphill battle.

40:12

And then if you look at it from the small business perspective, you know, if Starbucks can do it, why can't the mom and pop tea shop also call it, you know, Chinese matcha if it allows them to sell it easier, or Gokou matcha, where, you know, then the burden's on them to do all that education and all of this technicality when really these products aren't fundamentally changing at the end of the day, you know, Japan kind of lost its opportunity to protect this and quite frankly, I don't think the Japanese tea industry and the people that have money and power want to protect it.

40:46

It's there's so much money to be made in other countries producing. Oh yeah, matcha like it's. And if it's, and if anyone wants it to be a truly globalized product and movement, I don't think it should be quote UN quote protected. It's protection also means, you know, authority, right? It's implies power and no one has the power over matcha anymore.

41:12

Yeah, it's too hard to top down the side. It's so weird set of incentives. And I really think matcha is just a format now. Like if you were to say, how can I get someone to instantly understand that a tea is powderized in two seconds, right?

41:31

Calling something hojicha matcha or calling something black tea matcha or calling something oolong matcha for that matter, right. People will instantly understand what you mean, especially if you put some form of qualifier on it. So it's it's a whole can of worms. I don't think there is a right answer, but it leads to a lot of very interesting and different perspectives. And I think people who are very opinionated are extremely interesting actually on this topic. I think that there should be a really healthy tension and you know, I don't agree with some people and we can still remain friends and have these quote UN

42:07

quote imperfect allies and you know it. It just all depends on what you care about and what like perspective you take. I mean, if you look at matcha and the past 200 years as a Japanese product, yeah, I mean, Japanese matcha is matcha, right?

42:22

Until, you know, a couple decades ago, no other country was producing a product that was even remotely similar or similar to quality or characteristics as what the Japanese were making. That statement is no longer true.

42:35

We live in a very different world. So much investment has been made in places like China and Korea. What they are starting to produce a product that has similar characteristics to what the Japanese are making, right? That is such a different world than we were living in and let's say, like the 1980s or 1990s, right?

42:54

And then if you really zoom out 200 years, OK, yeah, the Japanese were the only people doing anything remotely similar. And then if you zoom out 600 years, well, the Japanese were producing a very different product. And then if you zoom out 1000 years, Japanese weren't doing it at all, it was the Chinese, right?

43:13

So like you can just like draw claim and legitimacy to whatever perspective you have depending on like how narrow or broad you want to be and how you're trying to claim that legitimacy. Yeah, I, I totally agree, Ryan. I mean, like it's back to my argument, right? Like the definition of of this powderized tea has been very fluid throughout history.

43:39

And right now how it's just happens that, you know, like everyone is an understanding, a version of this product at this time that's mostly made by this very country. But I mean like that it might change in the future. I'm I'm, I'm, I'm certain about that.

43:56

Like they, the Japanese will not have any control over the evolution of how this product is going to be called. And honestly, you know, I'm still team Matcha and I welcome everyone to use the term matcha for your product, whether or not you sort. Yeah, if it's or if it's made by somewhere else, you know, like if it's made in Vietnam or Northern Thailand, you know, call them matcha.

44:22

However, however you want it's there's there isn't necessarily a culture of protecting a name in the community of tea in China. Historically speaking, which is I guess the cultural difference between China and Japan. People welcome the usage of the term in other areas historically, like black tea or Hong cha or green tea or even pu-erh, like people in Yunnan. They still call the pu-erh tea being made in Laos and Northern Thailand or Myanmar pu-erh, although it's not made in China.

45:01

People did not trying to ban other people from using the word. Well, you know, what I hate about this question and about this whole argument is that the only way that you can defend whatever your position is, and you know, the position could be the base material, right?

45:19

Is it fair to call something gyokuro matcha? And the position could also be origin, like Chinese versus Korean versus Japanese matcha. Is it to claim any legitimacy? It is an endless look backwards. It is such a pointless question from the perspective of innovation and what comes next.

45:40

Yes, history is worth protecting. Yes, people have strong opinions and it matters how we got here. But it's still an endless look backwards. Depending on how far where you finish your look backwards, you can arrive at different conclusions.

45:57

Yeah, totally agree. So, you know, and even our perspective is constantly evolving and changing. There is very clearly not really a correct answer to this. And the thing about, you know, people's movements that are not like top down controlled is that like these words just get used and incorporated into the average lexicon and they start to form their own meaning. And they already have, right?

46:22

Starbucks didn't call it a gyokuro latte or a gyokuro frappe. They called it a gyokuro matcha frappe. And there's a reason why they did that, because it instantly communicates what it is. Maybe in a parallel universe where matcha was not that popular and everyone knew what gyokuro was, they would never use that word.

46:46

But that word has adopted new meaning to a large enough group of people that it is the better and more descriptive and more accurate word to use by most people's understanding of that word, whether or not it meets the technical definition of how it's defined in Japan or how it's legally defined, right.

47:09

These folk folksonomy, like the folk use of language, is that it has taken on the southern meaning and there is no going back. And reversing this trend would be impossible even if you didn't legally protect it. It's still, there's still tons of people, tons of travel influencers will go and like, do a business class review and take a glass of Prosecco and call it champagne.

47:36

This fight will never be over. No, you will not. It's by the end of the day a linguistic science issue or or language anthropology issue. It's like just like pointless education. I hate matcha videos and matcha reviews and matcha educators that like the very what they use to capture someone's precious attention when they're describing what matcha is to someone who doesn't know what it is. Spends the first two or three minutes talking about what ceremonial grade is.

48:07

It is completely made-up term like it, it, it, it's, it helps them maybe navigate the market, but it is no objective truth or reality to what someone is. And when you're capturing someone's attention for the first two or three minutes, you're choosing to define a term that we've all made-up in the past 20 years. It's like, I hate it when things start off with these types of definitions.

48:35

Like, it's such a pointless thing, right? But, you know, saying that matcha is a shaded tea that's turned into a powder that came from China, that, you know, it's now in Japan, Like, this is a much more accurate and interesting story than just jumping in to the difference between ceremonial and culinary grade, which are things that we've made-up anyway. And there's no definition and there's no consensus. And even here's here's the irony Sam in what I just described, I said it needed to come from shaded material. And if you have like sencha matcha, right, doesn't come from shaded material.

49:10

If you have Oolong matcha doesn't come from shaded material, right? So it's this all? Powder Oolong powder Sencha morta, Oolong morta. There we go, right solutions. Morta is really nice of a term because it has no cultural baggage.

49:26

Not even the Chinese is going to hold you accountable. Yeah, but it's, it's new, it's new category creation. And it's so close to something that already exists. And the reality is, is that people are just going to use the word that they already know. And then then you're in the same position of that stupid person who's using someone's precious attention that thinks that they're interested in matcha in the beginning, trying to define this new word that's a new category that no one knows and that no one agrees upon.

49:55

So like, it's still like, we've made-up this new thing and now we have to waste people's precious attention, which could be used to get them interested in something that they're much more primed to be interested rather than educate them on a term that's made-up and there's no consensus for, right?

Zongjun · 50:11

Like. Well, there's no consensus from matcha either. Yeah, well, there's yeah, depending on who you ask. Depending on who you ask exactly, but there's no consensus from for matcha either. From the consumers mind, I agree from from the industry perspective, I'd say that there is some expectations that are set, but it's there really is no right answer. I mean, even we're contradicting each other and. Even from the industry perspective, I mean like that there is a consensus largely for matcha right now at the moment actually if you are Team Japan, there is some sort of consensus, but that's still fluid and it's

Zongjun · 50:54

historically being fluid for the Japanese. So it's really we're talking about a snapshot of a piece of history or tradition that it's not really a long tradition, we're talking about like within 200 years. And even if you really zoom in, you know, Ian Chun from Yunomi, the really large e-commerce for artisanal Japanese tea, he was one of our first guests. And you know, one of the things that he said in his episode is that even the modern definition for what can pass as matcha would have never been considered matcha. You know, 203040 years ago, right? Like the idea of a weed milled matcha, right? Like that would have probably

Zongjun · 51:33

been locked out of the room in the 1960s, right? Or the 1970s. There we go. All of these auto harvesters or, you know, all of all of this new modernization and industrialization would have never been considered matcha. I think it has a different name than Japanese or something close to matcha but not right like some leaders. Commoners powder tea.

Zongjun · 51:59

Like I want my true matcha to be harvest and processed by my 300 servants. That's true, matcha. Or even like things that are like directly covered, like even like this disagreement with this in Japan, even with unliving memory about what you know, it can be considered, you know, true tea or real matcha. You know, used to be that you know, if it didn't from come from Toganoo, Uji matcha was fake matcha. And then that switch, this honcha idea switched from from Toganoo to to Uji, and that was considered the real tea and everything coming up outside of Uji was fake matcha. Fake tea, right.

Zongjun · 52:38

It's, there is there's no fluid definition for this. So I mean, is matcha a format? I yes and no. It, it depends on who you consider to be the higher authority. Like it's a Japanese history. Which people in Japan or do you stand with consumers?

Zongjun · 52:56

Do you stand with businesses? Do you stand with the legal definition? Do you stand with the the the the etymology and the semantics of the word matcha and where it came from, and even from this argument? Right. Depending on how far back you go in history, the definition is fluid.

Zongjun · 53:12

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's an idea. It's collective consensus or imagination or imagination of consensus. There's really no consensus, actually. So here's a question for you, Zongjun. Is this a stupid question? Is this a pointless question to ask? Yeah, very stupid, very pointless. But you know, like, I think it's also the fundamental driven cost of how tea culture moves forward that that people keep asking themselves or asking other people very similar questions in history and how people keeps seeking for innovations or clarity or, you know, culture protections. And I think that's, that's, that's that's how key culture has been in the past few

Zongjun · 54:03

thousand years. And I think there's no way or I, I don't think this shouldn't be changed. If something has a really, really strict definition that is so codified and it's unchangeable, like we're looking at that culture, we're looking at something that's behind a glass displayed in the museum. A true living culture is messy, is chaotic, and I think it's it's, it's beautiful.

Ryan · 54:31

Well, you see a great example of this in France and wine culture. There's this whole wine movement here called Vin de France or French wine, and it's producers who do not follow the rules of their local Appalachian because they're rebellious and they just label like the only thing that they're allowed to label on their wine. They can't say it's falls within, you know, the specific Appalachian that they have.

Ryan · 54:58

So they just call it French wine. That's the only thing that they're allowed to label because they don't want to follow the rules or they want to do more innovative things that those governing boards don't allow. And then it does get trapped in these cages.

Ryan · 55:10

And now when you certain, you know, see these AOCSDOCSDOPS are all these across Europe, these various protected regions, it actually is just like this weird rubber stamp of approval and it's never excellent. It can, I shouldn't say never, it can be excellent, but typically it's elevating the worst products status upwards. If you're really great, you don't want to be associated with sort of this average case and that falls within this protective status to form, you know, to distinguish your own product, right.

Zongjun · 55:44

So, you know, protectionism also has its downsides exactly as you said. But you know, to go back to the question, is this a worthless or useless question to ask for a stupid question? Actually to continue your argument about this Vin de France, I think it's happening to Uji-cha, like people like if you're really into matcha, you don't want anything that's actually just labeled as Uji-cha anymore. Like it's actually an indicator of poor quality or like a fishy maneuver.

Zongjun · 56:13

Like if you actually want Uji-cha from Uji, like you would want to see like tea from Goku or tea from Shirakawa, you don't want anything that's just labeled as Uji-cha anymore. True, very true. We're starting. To see that that's how protection leads to fishy maneuver, because there's economic incentives and now the protection is bastardized. Yeah, you get the blurry definition of what Uji-cha can be, which is 9998% not from Uji. And, you know, there's a lot of misinformation about that too. A lot of people say it has to be finished in Uji, but it's not true.

Zongjun · 56:51

It has to be finished anywhere within the boundaries of Kyoto Prefecture, which is a much larger, much larger surface area, I might say, than the small town of Uji. So it's it's a different kind of worms that we won't open.

Ryan · 57:05

But actually, I, I do think this is a pointless and stupid question, just like this whole episode. I will contradict myself. And I think it's incredibly important because it unveils what people care about across the industry, what brands care about, what consumers care about, what farmers care about, what producers care about, what educators care about. And it exposes what people are prioritizing in the hills that they're quote UN quote willing to die on. And understanding the their perspectives and their strong opinions tells us so much about all of the players within the system.

Ryan · 57:44

And it shows us so much the incentives that people have for promoting certain narratives over others. We can learn so much about this culture, the broader matcha, the broader tea culture that exists now and how it's changing.

Ryan · 58:02

You know, even since we've started this podcast and you know, I think this podcast is about two years old, the, the stigma on Chinese matcha itself has started to really fundamentally change, right? There's a lot more open minded people, even if you go to places like Reddit, a lot more open minded about the concept of of Chinese quote UN quote matcha and that it can actually have a good product despite its well earned reputation historically. So it's it's, it's tells us so much about the people. And you know, that's what's most interesting about, you know, specialty matcha movement is all of this culture to be unpacked.

Ryan · 58:38

And it is a fantastic lens to unpack these clashing and contradicting messy culture formation. And there's no such thing as culture formation unless it's messy, because humans are messy. And this is a wonderful collision of different cultures interacting, new cultures forming, innovation, moving things forward and people trying to anchor themselves in tradition.

Zongjun · 59:01

And it's a great lens to slap on to all of. This can I agree more. Human culture is messy and if you want a homogenized uniformic culture that anyone that has trying to execute throughout the history of human times, we are looking at some sort of authoritarian regiment and they got overthrown every single time at the end.

Ryan · 59:28

Yeah, And I think something that's worth bringing up too, there's always more to unpack. This episode's getting very long. But you know, part of the, and we've recorded a lot of podcast episodes on this. But I think part of the reason why this is such a contentious debate is the Japanese government and has done such a good job and both today and over time intertwining Japanese Ness with tea ceremony and therefore with matcha.

Ryan · 59:55

And how tea ceremony has been chosen as like the cultural representation of Japan because it encompasses architecture, flower arrangements, kimono, tatami, cast iron works like tetsubin and kama, ceramics, making ceramics, kaiseki cuisine. It is such a wonderful distillation of what can be considered Japanese, this informing the Japanese identity. Then now that this is getting uncoupled and that matcha is becoming a category that some random teenager in New York City wants to buy blank street coffee or that somewhere, you know, it's so outside of its original context that it leads to. This is why it's such a hot

Ryan · 1:00:41

debate. And people, rightly so, I think, get very offended because of the very close association with matcha tea ceremony, tea culture, with the very identity of Japanese people, Japanese Japanese nation, which makes it a really interesting case study of globalization and new culture formation and of Japan itself and the way that culture gets formed and spread. And the good wives and wise mother policy within Japan that happened after the Meiji Restoration, after Japan opened its doors and became a much bigger player on the global stage, was this concept around having creating a Japanese nation.

Ryan · 1:01:26

And part of good wives and wise mother policy was to having all, you know, female students at these girls schools practice tea ceremony, live and breathe and become more Japanese and spread it to their children, right? So it's so baked into the idea of what's being Japan for generations.

Ryan · 1:01:45

And I think people very rightly get offended when someone like a Chinese company fakes and makes counterfeit Marukyu Koyama products and is fakely labeling that and trying to pass that off as not only Uji matcha, but Marukyu Koyama.

Ryan · 1:02:01

And it's violating. It crosses this sort of cultural intimacy barrier of the way people see their own identity. So I can also really heavily sympathize with the Japanese versions of this argument. So it's it's so complicated.

Ryan · 1:02:20

On the other hand, right, you can totally understand people in China who have no reverence for Japan for very good reasons for historical regions who just don't give a crap. They grew up with their grandparents hating Japanese.

Ryan · 1:02:34

There's a horrible memory of all the atrocities that the Japanese did in China and you can think of this as some form of retribution. I think you were looking Sam at some online Chinese forums about all of this debate within the Chinese Internet. And there's some there's some arguments that those people can make that well, this is nothing compared to what the Japanese did to us.

Zongjun · 1:02:56

But now we're still in an endless look backwards. So it's. Well, I mean that that really transcends the discussion about the tea itself, right? There's nationalism, there's nationalisms mixing, there's illegal fights being missing. I mean, like that whole Marukyu Koyama and counterfeit. It's it's really illegal by any definition, not not even like a relocalizing a culture in China.

Zongjun · 1:03:24

It's it's that that's just illegal. And and the accusation, the accusation between two people from the two countries to each other. I think it's also transcends the idea of the key culture realm that's more, you know, about the unresolved historical trauma between the two nations. And that's, it's a, it's an interesting, it's an interesting discussion.

Zongjun · 1:03:53

But for that discussion, I don't think there's any third parties that can stepped in and make any claims. That's very much not a discussion related to TEA. Yeah. That makes this endlessly fascinating. Yeah. And which you know, it will be very interesting if people in China do starting to adopt the idea of using Moja to describe their own powder tea in the future.

Ryan · 1:04:18

I would argue that there there will be a lot of incentives for people to try to push for that narrative and trying to compete with Mata in the international stage and that that might be a very interesting dynamic that that might bring everybody in in the future. There's so much layers of so many layers of the complexity here.

Ryan · 1:04:41

Wow, such a hot mess. It's a big hot mess. She really can debate both sides of this because like, even like, you can argue, but who is responsible for making matcha this national beverage or international beverage? And it's like on nearly every cafe menu in most countries, you know, it's the Japanese, it's Japanese culture, its interest in everything Japanese related. It's Japan who gave this product its international stage. And the Japanese pushed for this internationalization. They were were scared of it being not consumed by people by by people outside of Japan enough. And you know, the domestic

Ryan · 1:05:26

consumption has been decreasing so drastically in all those years, back in the days they were like the higher to push this globalize globalization, like the the Uji government was incentivize was incentivizing people to to to sell their product globally. They themselves push for this internationalization. They themselves trying to lift matcha out from this cultural context.

Ryan · 1:05:54

You know, the Uji government was incentivizing people to add matcha into like confectionaries as an ingredient. We read it together from a document together, right? Yeah, there's a lot of unintended consequences of creating this market, which is saving the Japanese tea industry. Like you hear especially someone like Marc from Ooika talk about how the West is saving the Japanese industry, Japanese matcha, because it's created a new market, because Japan is a demographically declining country and the market is shrinking and shrinking and shrinking. And, you know, without these new markets, there's no one to sell the tea to.

Zongjun · 1:06:32

And now it's like now it's everyone got what they wished for. And now there's a lot of interesting unintended consequences that are happening. Yeah, yeah. And and exactly what you say, Ryan, like it's so intertwined with the Japanese Ness to the Japanese that I think it's it's it's what this whole heart feelings that's coming from for the Japanese.

Zongjun · 1:06:56

And if you are being as as the Koreans or the Chinese right like however you want to call this product as long as it sells. Yeah, but also the Chinese like the the idea of the Chinese culture, Chinese nation and Chinese people has not been so elaborately intertwined with matcha. It's not intertwined at all, right? That's like it's the Chinese have nothing to sacrifice or to lose by not protecting that part of their culture, right? Like the Japanese don't try to protect that part of the culture.

Zongjun · 1:07:29

It's their very identity. They have something to lose. They quote, UN quote have like skin in this game. It's it's, it's who they are because it's what it part of what it's means to be Japanese is all of these cultural associations. Yeah, but that.

Ryan · 1:07:45

And the purse of of tea ceremony being chosen as this cultural element. Yeah but that that intertwined Ness or incorporation has only happened for like 200 ish years. Like it's not that long of a history for them. Like the Japanese people has exist for thousands of years.

Ryan · 1:08:03

Matcha has not been their identity for many, many years in the history. It's only happened fairly recently. Yeah, but all those people are dead. Like you know who who had other things? And, and, and I would call it a little bit hypocritical in the sense that people don't even drink matcha nowadays in Japan. Or and they don't know anything about it. Yeah, yeah.

Ryan · 1:08:28

So yeah, well, no hard feelings, guys. You don't even want it. That's funny for the average consumer. Do you know what's interesting, Sam, is that a lot of the Western matcha brands or people outside of Japan, even like non Japanese matcha people, matcha brand owners. I, I don't want to call it guilt, but I think the best word is maybe obligation.

Ryan · 1:08:50

They have this obligation to honor tradition. And like I think like nearly every matcha company on earth would agree with some some statement like we honor tradition, but are trying to move matcha forward into the future. This is like 1 foot in the past.

Ryan · 1:09:06

One foot in the future is like a very common sentiment in this industry. But there's this guilt or obligation or this necessity to honor this tradition, which I think is it's interesting to examine, like why? Why does that have to be the case?

Zongjun · 1:09:22

That the significance really just lies on the gesture or the idea itself. It's the idea of I'm protecting or honoring the tradition. It's the idea of what what matcha is, and it's really not really about the tradition itself or the tea itself. Frequently the tradition is constantly changing and the product is constantly changing.

Zongjun · 1:09:47

Like there's really isn't a old, old tradition there to be, to be honored or protected. It's a living culture. And what does it even mean? Yeah, yeah, exactly it really. It's the idea. It's the imaginary, you know, honorific gesture that people perform.

Zongjun · 1:10:08

Wow. It's a performance, right? It's a performance. It's just like chanoyu. It's a performance. It's a theater, it's a stage. It's a demonstration of intentionality. And so never about the product itself. Yeah, that's true. I really, it's a theater both for oneself and to prove to the rest of the world that you're not appropriating this thing and benefiting off of someone else's culture without, you know, recognizing where it comes from.

Ryan · 1:10:39

Interesting. Like modern cultural artifact that's so necessary. I think it's important and it's good in some cases, but the form and the function are separated. Like the form is this performance performative thing. Everyone says they protect, they honor Japanese culture and then, OK, what's the function like? What are you actually doing right? Are we protecting culture?

Ryan · 1:11:05

Are we using a chasen to whisk matcha by hand? Is that, is that honoring culture? Is it honoring culture by just talking about the producer? Is it honoring culture by talking about the history? Where does that history stop and start?

Ryan · 1:11:19

Which version of the history, the Urasenke Foundation approved history or history that comes from other sources? All history is biased. And you know, unfortunately T history has become the Urasenke approved T history, which is very different than what if you look at primary documents that have been researched and investigated by the other T scholars And then like, what about it are we honoring?

Ryan · 1:11:43

Are we honoring the fact that Japanese tea ceremony institutions are sexist and misogynistic, largely speaking? Maybe not explicitly, but definitely implicitly, especially by modern definitions, right? Do we want to honor those institutions?

Zongjun · 1:12:00

So those institutions change? How did they change? Who should the change makers be? Who drives the conversation forward? Who has the authority to drive these conversation forward? Right? Like it's where does Japanese tea culture start and stop?

Zongjun · 1:12:15

It's. It's so. Messy. Even the sexism or misogynistic culture that we are accusing the Japanese society, that's also like fairly recently compared to the long history of Japan. Like Japan used to have female court members, female emperor and Empress, and very like educated female scholars, like the author for the Tale of Genji, you know, she's a female author. And that's arguably like the, you know, literature that people want to study Japanese culture like that, that was, you know, like a few 100 years ago.

Zongjun · 1:12:54

At the time, Japan was not like as sexist or misogynistic as when nowadays is. So even that is fluid. It's it's culture that that that has changed. Yeah, I think people are really trying to search for meaning and add legitimacy to whatever they're doing, whether or not you're a brand owner of a matcha brand in another country or a consumer, right? Like it's about building meaning and justifying an existence, practicing something that is bigger and greater than yourself.

Zongjun · 1:13:24

Like I'm sure that was Wazuka matcha farmer that commented on Jules Real saying that matcha must. It's like champagne can only be made in Japan. She sees himself as part of some legacy, some something greater than him or herself, right? Probably in a way.

Ryan · 1:13:41

And and that's where that perspective is coming from. It's a form of identity. It's a form of how you want to see yourself and the type of perspectives that you take in which really make this not a pointless question because it really defines who we are. The way we define these things, right? If, if we came out with a matcha brand tomorrow and called something Chinese, matcha versus Chinese mulcha, right reflects our values and our identity in the way and our intentions depending on whether or not we use the term mulcha versus matcha right.

Zongjun · 1:14:13

And it can be, yes, yes. We will, we will come up with our own definition and add into this chaos, Ryan, that's going to happen. Right. Like there's money involved, there's ease of communication involved, there's how much you care about consumers.

Zongjun · 1:14:28

It's your willingness to do education. It's how you legitimize that term and tie it back to history, and also how you square that and reconcile it with matcha history and how you reconcile it the way all of these other things it's it's so complicated. If is matcha just a format or is this other thing so complicated? And interesting and exciting.

Zongjun · 1:14:51

And so pointless and so just looking backwards, but it also defines who we are now and what our values are. Yeah, I mean it's pointless if you want to seek answer, but it's. So. Meaningful if you want to seek a answer or answers from different parties. And I, I guess the call to action for this episode are to see people that have alter alternative perspectives as yourself on this matter and listen with open ears. Maybe you don't agree with them, but at least you can learn a little bit more about them and what they care about and be open minded to the idea that they are part of this broader matcha culture, including yourself, and

Ryan · 1:15:33

that we should be more inclusive versus more exclusive and look outward, not inward, and look forward and backward as these things evolve. If we talk about being that just very constructive, right? It's important to understand who we are, where we came from. It's important to understand the motivations of everyone that's participating in the current, what I'll call matcha or current tea culture.

Ryan · 1:15:56

And then we need to think about, OK, what do we want moving forward? And people are going to want different things. And I think that's a beautiful thing, but I think I'm more inclusive. Exclusive future is better than a more exclusive future.

Zongjun · 1:16:08

I agree, but also I think people should do pick a side, pick a discourse, pick a answer that you think you believe in and and enforced it or, you know, like and disagree with yourself in the future if you end up learning something new and change to different sides, different perspective.

Ryan · 1:16:28

And I think that's totally fine, yeah. Totally fine. I mean, what if what if, you know, we're in a world 10 years from now and you know, we work with a Chinese tea farmer and we're producing just incredibly artisanal hand picked Longjing 43 cultivar shaded for 40 days with the last week of shading being triple layered blah, blah, blah.

Ryan · 1:16:52

All of these things and produced just the most interesting product. And we it was like the pinnacles of what matcha could be. And we take it to this farmer in Wazuka and say, taste this, we've made this for you. Would you like to try it? Takes a sip and says, oishii.

Ryan · 1:17:10

Like this is delicious. Where is this matcha from? It's from mainland China. Yeah. Or even not shaded, but oxidized, that there's so many, like unique practices that you can do with this format of tea that is not by the definition of tencha, but, you know, like it's powder tea by the end of the day.

Zongjun · 1:17:30

And you do need to pick a name to call. It depends on who you're siding with or who you agree with the most. Yeah. But even if these people that have these well defined perspectives and opinions taste a product like a really well milled gyokuro that has very similar characteristics, sensory characteristics to matcha and they taste it and say where is this matcha from? Then you realize that it's all just a bunch of projections that we're putting on this poor plant, and it says way more about us than it does about the actual product. Yeah, yeah.

Zongjun · 1:18:03

I mean like if you do care about the bio biology of the plant you should not shade it at all. Literally suffocating this poor vegetation. It's yeah, so many different perspectives you can view this with if you are really Ecomaniac and think about the poor plant itself and just the ridiculousness of this whole debate.

Zongjun · 1:18:28

And you know, the debate that we're having is such a much more reflection of us than of the product because we've both tasted and I'm sure there'll be more in the future. A lot of products that don't come from tencha that taste very similar and would be indistinguishable from matcha it outside of any label context can whether or not you call it, you know, you know, whatever you want that most people would have no idea it doesn't fall under and letting the product speak for itself. It's something we haven't talked about and I don't want to go too deeply because it's already running super long. Is the product itself right?

Zongjun · 1:19:02

If you're super product focus, right, where does it stop and start? And to put it in the camp of the people that only care about the taste, right? Like if you only care about taste, right, and just enjoy the matcha, then you really shouldn't care about these labels, right? Because we can mill gyokuro and have it tastes very similar to matcha.

Zongjun · 1:19:22

We can mill some gyokuro. And a lot of the samples that we've tasted from that really are not that distinguishable in terms of like the sensory experience of tasting that matcha or tasting that milled gyokuro matcha milled gyokuro powder or product that comes from outside of Japan.

Ryan · 1:19:39

If you really just enjoy the tea, why do these labels even matter? Yeah, but but even even with the product itself, there's so many different perspectives that you can care about. Like if you care about the health perspective, you really shouldn't be drinking any conventionally farmed tea. If you care about the farming or the health of the plant perspective, you really should not be should be drinking. You know all these organic product which takes a sacrifice of the taste.

Ryan · 1:20:11

It would certainly not be as tasty as the conventionally farmed tea. So even the product side has different shades of them or different parties that you can side with. Indeed. Completely. That's super interesting. Yeah. And even the house, you know, unshaded teas actually can have higher catechin contents and they taste worse, but they are technically more healthy if you're just looking at antioxidant levels.

Zongjun · 1:20:39

So yeah, really, pick aside, I mean, like people perceive tea really back in the days as a medicine, it probably tastes pretty bad back in the days too, yeah. Well, actually the earliest records of tea in Japan, people revered the fact that it was bitter because they thought of it as medicine. And actually one of the earliest use cases and endorsement for drinking tea in Japan was as a hangover cure. It's it's not at all the cultural associations or why it's revered nowadays.

Ryan · 1:21:10

Quite the opposite. A more mindful beverage also too. I mean, if you'll use matcha to center yourself every morning, right? And it's part of your daily ritual, why in the world could that not be with gyokuro matcha, right?

Ryan · 1:21:23

Like if that is what you care about and the reason that you engage in this practice to have your matcha moment everyday your, your moment of bliss, which I think is a miracle. Actually, the matcha industry and tea industry in general that has convinced the entire world that this mess of a preparation for a beverage is a moment in time.

Ryan · 1:21:44

I think that's great, but I actually, there's nothing Zen about opening this can quickly opening it as quickly as I can from the refrigerator so that not much air comes out perfectly weighing in, you know, 2 grams into my bowl, making sure I Preheat the bowl, but then I need to dry the bowl and then I need to sift it and then I need to clean the dry powder off of all of these implements. And then I need to make sure my water temperature is perfect. My bamboo chasen is hydrated and you don't do this whisking for three seconds and then I have to do and then you got to clean up everything.

Ryan · 1:22:15

But it's teaware. So you know, teaware, you have to be more careful with the dishware. It's like if you look at all the other steps that people don't record when they take their, their, their their video for Instagram of their moment of Zen, right?

Ryan · 1:22:32

There's nothing Zen about it. I think that people love that. But a minor miracle of matcha marketing. Yeah, a refrigerator. That's certainly part of Zen Buddhism, Very important utensils. Anyway, all right, this conversation is probably way too long. So to capstone, this Zongjun is matcha just a format now? I think it's an idea.

Zongjun · 1:22:56

It's a fantasy. Yeah, and it's different in everyone's mind. Everyone has different projections. Yep, Yep, and I think it's great. Let us know what you think if you agree with us, disagree with us, what you thought of some of these threads. If you have alternative opinion or super strong opinion, want to come on?

Zongjun · 1:23:12

We we'd love to learn about how you see this differently than us. And clearly we don't exactly take a side. We're pretty open minded. And if you're a longtime listener, you have realized that our opinions have changed on this very question depending on, you know, what you're framing about what you're talking about and kind of what the goals of what you're talking about are.

Zongjun · 1:23:32

And you arrive at very different conclusions. So a mess of a question. Thank you for bearing with us on this very long recording and we hope you enjoyed it and we'll see you on the next one. Hopefully a shorter episode.

Ryan · 1:23:44

Indeed. All right. Thanks.